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Sunday, February 7, 2010

Heavy Rain Demo Impressions

I just got finished with the Heavy Rain demo, and I must say, I am thoroughly impressed. More over, I am grateful I pre-ordered the collector's edition at HMV; only £3-4 more than the regular edition ($4.67-$6.24 more, akshuly).

The demo starts off by letting you tweak a few options, like the difficulties, which are odd, but better than merely "Easy" or "Hard:"

Easy "I play video games quite regularly. I am familiar with the wireless controller."

Medium "I play video games occasionally. I am not very familiar with the wireless controller."

Hard "I play video games very often. I am perfectly familiar with the wireless controller."

A bit on the strange side, again, but the choices did confuse me a bit. I wouldn't know where to begin to even think of where a difficulty would come into play in a game like this, but it probably increases the variety of the contextual button jamming.

After that, you can either start a new demo, or choose to go to each area of the demo separately. You have the tutorial, a sleazy place, the crime scene and the trailer. I'm not making these names up, these are the names from the game.

The tutorial is basically you playing as P.I. Scott Shelby getting out of his car and walking down an alley. However, this alley has the tutorial info, allowing you to familiarize yourself with the gist of the game, ranging from opening the car door to getting his inhaler out for an asthma attack.

The sleazy place has our star, Scott, going to what is apparently a whore house, looking for a certain someone. I won't spoil the story here, but it's here in the demo where you get a feel for the extent to the dialogue, which is almost Mass Effect-esque; multiple answers that branch off, however, you only have a certain amount of time in which to respond. If you don't get your questions in before time's up, sorry, you're shit outta luck and gotta work with what you got.

Our crime scene, now this is where shit gets fun. You fill the shoes of FBI Agent Norman Jayden who is called to a scene of a death, who the victim is quickly penned as a victim to the Origami Killer, the main antagonist of the game. Again, not spoiling the story, but you get a feel for the clue-gathering side of the game, which shits all over Condemned.

If you want the demo, you'll have to wait until the 11 when it's out on the NA PSN Store. If you're impatient, like myself, do some Googling to find out how; it's really fucking easy.